<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. <MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".(the very next day)<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."<MageKing17> **** ME<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"(...)<MageKing17> so<MageKing17> more than two hours<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

batwota: steele's maneuvering for the coup de grasMatthTheGeek: you mispelled grâceAwaesaar: gracebatwota: oh right Darius: ah!Darius: yes, i like thatMatthTheGeek: the way you just spelled it it means fatAwaesaar: +accent I forgot how to keyboardMatthTheGeek: or greaseDarius: the killing fat!Axem: jabba does the coup de grasMatthTheGeek: XDAxem: bring me solo and a cookie

Confirming from multi experience that in a one hull to one hull matchup the majority of Kushan ships will flatten their Hiigarran descendants. The respective destroyers make for a particularly painful case, as the Hiigarran model frequently loses when outnumbering Kushan types two to one. Similarly, twenty Blade interceptors will beat four squadrons of Hiigarran interceptors with minimal losses. Firelance ion frigates will slaughter their opposite numbers in an even matchup without even breaking a sweat. The Hiigarran battlecruiser appears to be the only real exception to this as it does reasonably well against Kushan Avatar heavy cruisers. (Though I did have that one time where my pair of Avatars ate four destroyers and a battlecruiser alive, because why not.)

So if you felt your fleet wasn't as powerful in HW2 as it was in HW1, you were right.

Vaygr seem to be doing better; their bombers and fighters are no match for Kushan Blades, but their laser corvettes are hilariously destructive against Kushan frigates and capitals. Vaygr destroyers are once again no match for ion cannon-armed Kushan destroyers. Their Missile Frigates are a fair match against Kushan Vengeance assault frigates or Firelance ion cannon frigates, though, and their carriers seem more durable.

Vaygr assault frigates and Hiigarran flak frigates seem almost totally ineffective against HW1 strike craft. HW1 ships which can hyperspace around like mad in the frigate and destroyer categories have a huge mobility advantage if you can find the resources to exploit it.

There's also a reason why I made the observation I did about the feeling that your Homeworld 1 fleet was more powerful than your Homeworld 2 fleet. The ingame stats, directly converted from their original sources, pretty much prove it. Everyone who thought 2's ship setups and tactical ideas were weird and ill-considered in comparison to 1 has had their case more or less made for them.

The disparity between the effectiveness of Vaygr and Hiigarran ships trying to cope with Homeworld 1 ships also suggests some awkward things about the second game in general, though it doesn't quite prove them.

Well to be fair, previously there was no reason for the stats of HW2 ships to follow HW1 stats as long as each race in the game was balanced against the other.

So I figured I'd try a bit of Complex. I had forgotten how annoying it is. It has some good ideas (more ships and modules, modular weapons, etc.) but it is hinder TERRIBLY by the other crap they added (power and crew requirements, at least having to come up with the crew makes SOME sense if you ignore the fact the mothership is supposed to have extra crew in cryosleep, but seriously ships can't power themselves? Also the rank system is stupid, you already have to tech up anyways, why add ANOTHER barrier?)

12?Did I miss a difficulty setting somewhere somehow? I've never seen more than 5 (and those always manage to blow up at least one cryo tray with focused fire before my **** can even get close to it). Btw, it bugged me tremedously that if you capture those assault frigates, they seem to turn into RU. Didn't get a single one in ship form, and I took all 5 of them. That's not what happened in the old classic homeworld.

I don't know if its some kind of deliberate change done in the name of 'balance' so you don't get 5 free frigates, but if it is, it is a silly one. Because two missions after that I already added this to my fleet:

Confirming from multi experience that in a one hull to one hull matchup the majority of Kushan ships will flatten their Hiigarran descendants. The respective destroyers make for a particularly painful case, as the Hiigarran model frequently loses when outnumbering Kushan types two to one. Similarly, twenty Blade interceptors will beat four squadrons of Hiigarran interceptors with minimal losses. Firelance ion frigates will slaughter their opposite numbers in an even matchup without even breaking a sweat. The Hiigarran battlecruiser appears to be the only real exception to this as it does reasonably well against Kushan Avatar heavy cruisers. (Though I did have that one time where my pair of Avatars ate four destroyers and a battlecruiser alive, because why not.)

So if you felt your fleet wasn't as powerful in HW2 as it was in HW1, you were right.

Blah, ships felt so flimsy in HW2. Frigates especially. Never was much of a fan of it. These testing results don't suprise me one bit.

What have they done to the formation thing?Everytime I order my strikecraft to form a formation, these buggers actually form it, but as soon as they are attacking, every single crackhead breaks away and does whatever the **** they want!And no fuel? Next mission is Kadesh... I'm a litle worried that it won't be possobble to simple kill the fuel pods and watch the swarmer run dry...And was there a unit limit in the original and did the number of captured ship fit in?Right now if captured a whole lot of enemy firgates and two destroyers, but the missile destroyers were nowhere to be found when I beat the crap out of the exterminatus fleet...

Everytime I order my strikecraft to form a formation, these buggers actually form it, but as soon as they are attacking, every single crackhead breaks away and does whatever the **** they want!

Yeah I have no ****ing clue why they ****ed that up so bad. I send 70 bombers in claw formation to the ghost ship and instead of delivering a massive strike they just flew up to it, didn't fire much, then broke formation and just kind of durdled around. I remember in classic I disabled the ghost ship in nearly one attack run with a big bomber claw formation like that.

And was there a unit limit in the original and did the number of captured ship fit in?Right now if captured a whole lot of enemy firgates and two destroyers, but the missile destroyers were nowhere to be found when I beat the crap out of the exterminatus fleet...

You can go over the limit with captured ships. Right now im at double the population cap of frigates because I captured 25 something of them when the ghost ship shut down.Also I think you misremember, the missile destroyer is first encountered at the ghost ship, never before that.

Having such a huge amount of ships is killing me in this super nova mission. The line of captured taiidan frigates extends for such length that they start in the radiation zone. After watching the cutscene they were already at 80% health.And I just lost half my bombers trying to load them up into my (captured taiidan) carrier, as they formed such a long line that the radiation killed them.

It is sometimes possible to assign groups and order them befor starting cutscenes fire.At Kharak I was able to order my strikecraft and corvettes to attack the taiidan frigates even before Fleetcommand told my the cryothingies were under attack.By assigning numbers to the captured Taiidan, maybe they can be ordered into guard formation of the mothership at mission start?At after which point can you capture a taiidan carrier? tried that befor the diamond mission(destroying asteroids), but my salvage corvettes were all about "No way, we'll just sit next to it an let us cut to pieces"

But this formation crap really bugs me... they don't even form a simple sphere after getting a guard order!

Mission 5 is where you can get destroyers and the first taiidan carrier.It's not actually very useful to have the carrier, it can't build, its just a mobile repair point for fighters I guess.

My captured ships change colors randomly with each mission. My carrier has switched from kushan to taiidan colors like 5 times already, same with the destroyers. Now its even colored black, and I haven't even gotten to that point in the campaign yet.